I could not agree more. The word ‘Culture’ comes up a lot when I do deployments of Project Server. Obviously Project Server is a technological solution but I go to great lengths to make sure that the people I talk to about it know that it is just part of the “nutritious breakfast”. When I worked for QuantumPM we all did our best to fix the all to common misunderstanding among some clients that installing Project Server was going to suddenly make them better at doing projects. Sadly, it did not always work. Technology is easy. Project Server 2003 is pretty darn easy to install. Configuring is more difficult but only because it requires an analysis of the culture of the organisation and of it’s processes. Here before the tool is even ready to be used the importance of culture is right there having an effect on the success of the technology.
Timesheets\task status was the place where the importance of culture was the easiest to get across to clients. Collecting status via an electronic timesheet (like the one in Project Server) seems, on first glance of the client, to be pretty simple: Tell your team members they should go to a web page and enter their time each week. No problem, right? WRONG! What if they have never had to do this before? What if they think you only want this to see who is not putting in ‘enough’ hours in a week? What if they don’t trust the managers to use this info in a way they agree with? These are all important cultural factors in an organisation that need to be addressed before rolling out a timesheet type solution. I remember first seeing this when I worked at Pacific Edge Software. We had the same problem with our clients there as many Project Server clients: team members resist the deployment of timesheet type status collection methods because the organisational culture was one of mistrust and fear of what would be done with that information.
I always try to do my best to correct my clients when they refer to what we are doing as “installing” Project Server. Installing Project Server is something that happens but it is not why I’m there (even if is why you THINK I'm there). What companies like QuantumPM are doing is project management process improvement that just happens to install some software in support of the larger deployment of new processes (read process as ‘culture’).
There is a HUGE difference between ‘installing’ and deploying. Installing Project Server takes about an hour or two. Deploying Project Server as a part of a larger process\culture change program takes months if not years of ever evolving changes, tweaks and improvements.
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